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The Relationship Between African American Cinema And Hollywood

Analyse the relationship between African American Cinema and Hollywood exploring the effect on ethnic representation in 2 key films

Today on the surface at least it is possible to say that black actors have reached stardom comparable to and in some instances well beyond their white counterparts. Will Smith is the current favourite for the blockbuster action movie moving away from his ethnic buddy movies such as Men in Black and Wild Wild West. There have been Academy awards for actress Halley Berry, nominations for Denzel Washington and there have never been as many African American film makers working within the industry. The man to credit for much of this is of course Spike Lee who revisited black new wave cinema in 1986 with the success of independent feature She’s Gotta Have it launching many of today’s stars with subsequent films and opening the doors for many new African American film makers. Lee however has been quoted recently in saying that “there are more black stars in cinema but I don’t know if there is very much diversity of roles” certainly the age for African American’s in cinema can be described as the best its ever seen however critics would argue that the effect of Hollywood hegemony upon these films have created something far away from what would be described as true ethnic representations.

Historically and predictably the relationship between the industry and African American cinema has been intrinsically linked with the civil rights movement. Certainly it is not a good sign of things to come when one of the industries most influential early national films Griffith’s The Birth of a nation is a controversial promotion of white supremacy and the Ku Klux Klan. Black representation in early Hollywood cinema stemmed around stereotypes and racism, comedy actors such as Stephin Fetchit who although reached high levels of fame did so through his portrayal of a “lazy, slow-witted jive-talkin’ “coon”” which greatly offended the African American...